The artist Nicolas de Staël and poet René Char met in Paris in 1951 and immediately became friends, planning multiple projects together. However "Poems of René Char" is the only publication that was realized before de Staël’s death. For this collaboration, de Staël not only created the woodcuts but also chose the layout, ink, and typography. De Staël’s abstract woodcuts of fragmented forms are not meant to illustrate Char’s 14 poems but serve instead as companion pieces that invite the reader to uncover their meanings. Char wrote of de Staël’s images, “The woodcuts Nicolas de Staël engraved for my poems... appear for the first time on a virgin snowfield that the sunray of your gaze will attempt to melt.”